Ecopoetry, Ecopoetics & the Life of a Water Poet

September 25, 2016

We're still trying to adjust to an equinox that has passed with very little local attention. Fairbanks was frankly pagan in its appreciation of the equinoxes and solstices.

And I miss that.

Please indulge me with an experiment. I'm going to see if I can post this to a variety of other media sites. The point is to see if I can do this for my publisher, Boreal Books (an imprint of Red Hen Press), and continue to develop support for my 2018 book, Bone Willows. If you click on the link to your right, you can sign up for the mailing list. We'll remind you about the book in, y'know, a year and a half.

September 07, 2016

I'm really just getting used to using the blog space again, but I do need a bit of content. I'm open to suggestions...

We're getting settled into new patterns and new community here in Champaign. Much warmer, of course, and so much more humid. Fewer willows--and types of willows--but it's comforting to see the hardwoods again.

On Labor Day, one of Dana's new colleagues came over for wine and conversation. She did her MFA work, and a little extra, at UAF, so we talked about Fairbanks and Alaska. Years ago, I had a friend group that contained a small side collection of people who had lived in Prague at about the same time. They would occasionally clump up at parties and talk about living there. Our Alaska conversation felt a lot like that. The place doesn't feel like the rest of the US, and living there is transformative.

May 21, 2016

It’s a way to engage the world by and through language. This poetry might be wary of language, but at its core believes that language is an evolved ability that comes from our bodies, that is close to the core of who we are in the world. Ecopoetry might borrow strategies and approaches from postmodernism and its off-shoots, depending on the poet and their interests, but the ecopoetic space is not a postmodern space. An ecopoem might play with slippages, but the play will lead to further connections.

Ecopoetry does share a space with science. One of the concerns of ecopoetry is non-human nature (it shares this concern with the critical apparatus it borrows from, ecocriticism). It certainly shares that concern with most of the world’s history of poetry: How can we connect with non-human nature that seems so much more, so much larger than ourselves? How can we understand it? One way is to laud nature unrealistically. Another is to praise of the human control of nature. Ecopoetry, though, pushes past the traditions of the pastoral or the georgic; as in science, nature is neutral and can only be approached with the understanding that non-human nature will forever remain non-human. It is profoundly Other and starkly confronts us with what it means to be human. As poets, we can approach and explore non-human nature, but the connection will always retreat. Science, however, allows the poet to name things carefully. And it looks into the mind that makes and reads poems and points the poet toward compositional, structural, and aesthetic strategies.

Some ecopoetry wishes to engage nature as a spiritual space, but we live in bodies, not spirit. We can only speak from a bodied connection to the world. The body is a genetic space as well, and that means that family is a natural concern of ecopoetry. The family that came before us, the family around us, the family we create and that will outlive us. Families form culture, they connect us to culture; they are where culture begins. Families come out of histories and places. Thus, a successful family ecopoem must look outside the immediate, constrained concerns of the nuclear family.

The ecopoem must connect to the culture and society that it inhabits. You might ask, How can it not? But when thinking about an ecology, it’s easy to overlook aspects of the system, including the largest aspects. Culture is a product of evolution; it is a product of non-human nature, yet we recognize it as our own, human product. The ecopoem must contend with this paradox; it must connect here. Culture. Non-human nature. It is around these indissoluble differences that ecopoetics searches for the transitional phases, the ecotones, the shifting boundaries that yield language, insight, struggle. But of course these differences aren’t differences at all. We are natural beings building cities as naturally as bees build hives. Unlike the bee, however, we are aware of the hives we build, why we built them, how they connect, intellectually, to other hives, other people. Also unlike the bee, when we look to other creatures, we understand that we cannot know them. Thus, the differences swirl back up to surround us and the search for poetry begins again.

The ecopoem is connected to the world, and this implies responsibility. Like other poetic models that assume a connection and engagement (feminism, Marxism, witness, etc.), ecopoetry is surrounded by questions of ethics. Should the ecopoem do something in the world? But how can a poem be said to accomplish anything? Or is that position only of a poetics that recognizes only aesthetics? Is there a rhetoric to ecopoetry? Can the ecopoem be compelling as an object and as a political call? Is the meaning of non-human nature stable? Does—can it?—have a meaning at all? These are questions that remain open, that the community of ecopoets must track down, investigate, turn their minds to again and again.

Lastly, the ecopoem must connect to the human capacity to play. More so even than our animal cousins, we are creatures who play. Ecopoems must allow our full range of joy and experimentation as we try to connect to our world and the other creatures here with us. Play allows for interdependent coevolution that explores the contingent within connection, that lets the mind roam without limit. Play reveals deep connections.

Even as we try to understand and make sense of a world that will ultimately evade us, as we decide what responsibility we should exercise, as we work to bring culture and science into our work, ecopoets must remember our bodies, our families, and push the range of our language.

September 18, 2013

I’ve lost track of time, I think. How long have we lived in
this place?

Part of the losing track comes from recognition of home,
learning the rhythms of where we live. We’ve had overnight lows in the 20s
recently. It’s finally dark enough to see the auror
a when I’m up and getting
breakfast ready. Fishing is tapering off, the berries are about done, and
people are coming back with moose, caribou, and sheep.

Of course, I like this feeling that I know the equinox is
coming and that everyone around me knows it, too. We’re a bit anxious about
winter, but we’re also looking forward to skiing, snowshoeing, sledding—the
excuses to double the hot chocolate and add a bit more brandy.

The patterns feel like an old rhythm, like patterns any of
our ancestors would recognize, even if they wouldn’t recognize the snow tires
and gore-tex. Or the planning for ways to protect iPods on a winter ramble.

Maybe it’s the gray that has me feeling expansive. Gray in
the sky, gold on the leaves. A little woodsmoke. I think I’ll stop for wine on
the way home. Join me, won’t you?

September 04, 2013

Labor Day 2013, and we’re just back from a recent trip down and up to Hatcher Pass, a former gold mining community tucked high up in the Talkeetna Mountains near Anchorage. We learned a couple things on this trip, our first vacation not centered on extended family.

The first and best thing we learned is that Wendy is a patient and fun car traveler. We had prepared, of course. Snacks, drinks, toys, books, colored pencil, paper: the weapons and armor to fend off tedium. But still, six hours? The last hour had us climbing 3000 feet in elevation, so it was beautiful and distracting.

Roadside, looking down at the old mine. Note the lack of guardrail.

It was also my most harrowing hour. A steep climb. On narrow, gravel roads. And here’s the detail that had me sweating the sour sweat of rehab or fear: no guardrails. Probably a thousand foot dropoff in places, and I’ll repeat: no guardrails. A bit of a thrill for all of us.

We learned that you need to get your kid—or we need to get our kid—involved in the planning of the trip. She’s happy to roll along, but we got the sense that she would have been happier if she had a hand in the planning.

We learned more about rain.

Specifically, we learned that rain is not so friendly when you’re in a different city. I had scouted out several parks that offered hiking and climbing (pretty much, a park with trees and rocks offers climbing for a preschooler), and had highlighted a couple of parks with kidfrastructure—slides, swings, and non-organic climbing equipment. Kincaid Park, which apparently hosts world cup cross-country skiing, had a lot of good running space, hills to climb, and even a small network of slides and equipment. It also had a steady

At Eagle River Nature Center. Some Chugach peaks.

drizzle and a constant wind from off Cook Inlet. We could walk a bit, climb a tall hill overlooking the inlet, and play on the equipment. Except for the slide, which had been installed with the final foot heading uphill, making it a sort of spoon. Not so good on a rainy day.

The rest of the trip featured similar rain events. We could shuffle through rain to museums, restaurants, or shops, but we never got enough of a break to leave our hoods down and frolic. Or, more to the point, let Wendy frolic.

We also learned to cut our losses. Too much rain, not enough frolic makes for an unhappy kid. She didn’t ask for it, but we decided to go home a day early. A little bit sad, but in fact a good choice. We were more relaxed, and we got a chance to go berry-picking that Sunday.

While we stayed in the Talkeetnas, we crossed the Alaska Range, and ventured into the Chugach Range. The mountains will still be there when we go back. And we'll probably learn even more about ourselves as a family.

June 27, 2013

In a recent opinion piece over at the Chronicle, Pascal
Bruckner argues for ecologism (a sort of conservation-minded ideology) as the
new hairshirt for the world. Tales of ecological collapse—driven by humans and
their desires—evoke a guilt as heavy and unavoidable as original sin.

We, those affected by such dolor, need to get a grip. We
need to shake off our despair and embrace progress. Bruckner rallies around
this call:

A race has begun between the forces of despair and those of
human ingenuity. In other words, the remedy is found in the disease, in the
despised industrial civilization, the frightening science, the endless crisis,
the globalization that exceeds our grasp: Only an increase in research, an
explosion of creativity, or an unprecedented technological advance will be able
to save us. We have to try to push back the boundaries of the possible by
encouraging the most fantastic initiatives, the most mind-boggling ideas. We
have to transform the increasing scarcity of resources into a wealth of
inventions.

Shame! And get a sweater.

As well as this final flourish: “Above all, we have to save
the world from its self-proclaimed saviors, who brandish the threat of great
chaos in order to impose their lethal impulses.”

The piece left me thinking that maybe an American raised
outside of Catholicism doesn’t feel the weight of guilt drag so heavily. Or
maybe it’s that I don’t mind taking short showers and wearing sweaters. Or it
may be that I don’t participate enough in the mainstream of my culture and so
the messages he resists are muted for me. And, really, “lethal impulses”?

I’ll say this, though, bootstrapping isn’t the answer. Our
ability to leverage our technology seems suspect at best (I’ll just reach back
to Alfred Nobel to get the ball rolling). However, I agree that “What is at
stake is the pleasure of living together on this planet that will survive us,
whatever we do to it.” And we certainly need “trailblazers and stimulators” to
insure that survival. But there’s a balance to be found, and the search for
that balance is not served well by Bruckner.

June 02, 2013

The editor comments are back. Substantial but not unfair. In our defense, Jeremy and I generated 10k words in two weeks. We were expecting heavy notes, and so it wasn't a shock to return to the essay. But it's still a lot of work.

And ASLE is wrapping up. My tribe--and Jeremy's--disbanding for another two years. So I'm in a deeply ecocritical state of mind that doesn't shut off when I'm reading books to Wendy.

The former is a kind of re-telling of theParable of the Talents. The daughter, in this version, who wins approval works hard with her mother's magic to re-grow the kingdom. In Emeraldalicious--

I'll cut to the chase: how epic is this fail?

The book is another in the "-alicious" franchise begun by Pinkalicious. The art is intriguingly awkward and the story--for the first one--is unsteady and perhaps objectionable. Perhaps not. So we've read other books in the series because they get high-profile launches and library space, and they're fine, I guess, if forgettable.

Short answer: epic.

In this book, Pink and her brother are in a park. They discover a trash heap (not Marjory) in their favorite part of the park and use egocentrism and magic to remove the garbage. Now, I could spend a bit of time going over the details of the fail, but I'll narrow it down to one criticism: Change takes work--not magic, not wishing. I don't mind magic in a story, and if magic had helped her to contact all her friends to come help clean up the park, then I wouldn't be all cranky (in this scenario, Twitter=magic). Change isn't magic. It's us.

I had Dana read it with the only preface being that I was suspicious. She put it down at the end and tucked it back into the libary bag. She only raised an eyebrow at me. We've talked about it, of course, but it's the beauty of libraries: you don't own the books.

Ah! But two weeks ago we were contacted by the editors asking if we'd
put the chapter together; another participant had to withdraw. So I've
been crashing back into the world of ecocriticism, pedagogy, and all
things academic.